Male Strippers Bring Out the Inner Beast in Seemingly Normal Women

I’m not secretive at all about my dislike of strippers or strip clubs. I would all but hatch an egg if my man went to one, and I have no desire to cough up money myself to sit in a roomful of hormonal women and drool over some big ol’ greasy, oiled up man named Wild, Wild Wesley dressed in leather chaps, a gun holster, and a cowboy hat. And be expected to fork over a cover charge and a handful of my hard-earned singles in the process? Puh-lease.

There’s nothing sexy to me about a dude man-twerking in a leopard-print G-string and a pair of boots. For one, it’s unmasculine for a guy to dance and prance about in his glory and for two, it’s just kind of cheesy—washboard abs, big package, and all.

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My disdain was confirmed early, when I was still in high school and got invited to a friend’s engagement party. Dinner had been served, guests were filing out, and me and my naïve self was sitting on the sofa when I noticed a cop standing at the door talking to the groom-to-be. I didn’t think anything of it—we were in a persnickety neighborhood and I figured someone had complained about the noise or the lack of parking since so many of our cars had taken up all of the free space on the block. But Miguel cut out, the booty music popped on, and all of the sudden, the cop ripped off his respectable civil servant uniform and jangled his caboose into the middle of the living room floor.

The crowd went wild. Red Solo cups scattered, paper plates of food were shoved every and anywhere, and women who had previously been sitting there good and ladylike all but crumpled themselves up in their metal folding chairs trying to grab a handful of flesh. It brought out the animals in them. I, on the other hand, just wanted to get the heck out of dodge. And because of my vapid disinterest, he put me in his crosshairs.

He swayed his man parts two inches from my face. He crouched down and swiveled his bare butt in the most unwelcome lapdance ever performed. He stood on the couch, put his legs on each side of me and tried to place his satin-covered pouch on the top of my head. Right then and there, in the midst of the clamoring and clawing of my fellow party-goers, I was thoroughly humiliated.

OK, so I admit that I’m not the wildest girl roaming the streets. I’m also not a prude and I try to keep a free swingin’ attitude for other folks. But there’s just something about strippers that calls up the freak in seemingly normal, civilized women. They break out like a pack of hounds at the sight of a penis and a piece of exposed rear end. If you’ve been to a bachelorette party recently, you know firsthand. Hell, I’ve seen bridal and baby showers, even retirement parties, disintegrate into excuses to paw on some flesh-peddling male dancer. It is never a shining moment in womanhood.

Even worse, my boyfriend emailed me a video link and a short message that simply said, “If you ever go to one of these, you better not ever let me find out about it.” I clicked and my womanist flag sagged in the wind. It was a bachelorette party gone way, way wrong. The camera panned to a dancer moving through the crowd, stopping here and there to let women rub and touch on his man part. Then, one gave him real, actual factual fellatio while he stood, hand on hip, waiting for her to bust her lusty exhibitionist move. He returned the favor.

I’ve seen more clips of regular women—Shirley from accounting, your child’s preschool teacher, the gal who directs rush-hour traffic—all yipping it up for the camera. Really ladies? Really? Is this how our sexual liberation has encouraged us to behave? I mean, I don’t touch a gas pump without sanitizing the germiness off my hands, much less even think about putting my mouth near a complete stranger’s southern region, particularly after I just saw another complete stranger putting her mouth on it, too. Ugh.

We’re grown, yes. And we can do whatever we want, yes. And men act a fool at their bachelor parties, yes. But the get-back is not acting like a pack of just-released inmates and putting our health—and our dignity—at risk in the process.